ABOUT THIS EPISODE

What was Napoleon's impact during his lifetime, in France and across Europe and how much of this can we see today? With Tom Sutcliffe, Andrew Roberts examines the man in his new biography, Jenny Uglow explores living in Britain through Napoleon's Wars, 1793-1815, Sudhir Hazareesingh looks at his legend, while musicologist Gavin Plumley focuses on Schubert in Vienna in the aftermath of Napoleon.Producer: Simon Tillotson.

IN THIS EPISODE

TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00this is the baby say this podcast is supported by advertising outside the U. K. thank you for listening to this download of start the week presented by Tom Sutcliffe hello a new biography of Napoleon Bonaparte's point sentiments bibliography that mold books have been published with his name in

00:00:20the title than there have been days since he died evidence of a huge and continuing fascination with the emperor general the author of that biography Andrew Roberts is with us to explain why he's at it another book to the list and he's joined by Jenny you glad he

00:00:35suggests that the podium helped shape modern Britain as well as more than friends in her book in these times what she calls a crowd biography of the British at war with bony also with us the political historians to DHEA has are saying who argues that was really was

00:00:51the beginning of the Napoleon legend not the end and the musicologist Gavin Plumlee on Schubert's Vienna the city and culture shaped by Napoleon's invasions and wars we thought they with Andrew Robert Sander you've cordial book Napoleon the greats there's no qualifying subtitle no trimming that wine grapes and

00:01:11not the toria so terrible because his achievements were far greater than his notoriety and yes he was a ruthless man and committed at least one war at crime but when one sets his achievements against that to treatments like the code Napoleon the concordats which made peace with the

00:01:32church the educational systems of the ground a call in the least say at the ending of the war in the phone day which it killed more people than the guillotine during the terra when one looks also at his tax reforms at the bone to France which still exists

00:01:48today at the conceded Tara which still exists today one sees and of course the gorgeous Hockett for glories of Paris many of them created by the payment one sees that this man was bigger than the negative sides of himself now I'm it you you made that point in

00:02:03your video shot take it with that wasn't hyperbole it's actually it's actually true than in a three thousand five hundred biographies but if you're looking at books with him in the title then you then you get two more %HESITATION than day since his death so you can once

00:02:17we wanted to be the number one answer he said well I don't I I'm not with you tonight second okay %HESITATION this it is not difficult neon series %HESITATION to answer the question you have noticed me is that I'm since two thousand for the phone to us on

00:02:33the podium and a fantastic organization in Paris has been bringing out a additions of every single one of the thirty three thousand letters signed by the paid and what these two is to give us %HESITATION a view of the way in which this extraordinary man managed compartmentalize his

00:02:52mind when he was about to to fight the battle of Brody night the night before he would sit down and write the rules of of girls school when he was about to leave more leave Moscow the Kremlin it and everything but the Kremlin would burn down the actually

00:03:05he sat down and %HESITATION and rates the regulations for the committee full says you describe that is an ability to compartmentalize some might describe it as as as a kind of mania at an absolute inability to delegate any task however small I mean it is very funny he'd

00:03:22he literally rights nights about prostitutes in buying name in a certain specific saying you've got to do this with the yes yes he tells the details that this is as he's moving the and his entire army across for the estimates campaign to smash the the Austrians and Russians

00:03:38in what ultimately became the battle about slit his greatest victory he was also writing to the prefect of Genoa to say %HESITATION that you can't take a mistress to the opera now is this compartmentalize Asian or is it a control freak three I think the two obviously to

00:03:52overlap but you gave you gave her the the up side yes seems to me in in in in a loss of your I think so he was keeping ten balls in the air at the same time so %HESITATION and %HESITATION so successfully until of course the eighteen twelve

00:04:06campaign when they will stop falling down and and do so with a huge crash that you may very early in your book the monks who tool Napoleon when he was young subscribe to the great man theory of history I take it you do too but I do after

00:04:19writing this book yes I think this is any didn't default he's when he's a standing rebuke companion to the determinist view of history which is just a vast impersonal forces that decide everything you know this this is a great man and he did make Evan he did make

00:04:33decisions and you know he was doing this at the same time as having well he himself when he was on since Lena in exile admitted to having six or seven mistresses I've delineated twenty two in this book he was a very busy man you have written it reads

00:04:49to me like it's that's the counsel for the defense I mean you you say yes he lined but it was strategic %HESITATION yes he massacred but it was in the interests of limiting the deaths did you we self consciously coming in no the defense national tool it was

00:05:06literally the more that I I've read his %HESITATION his correspondence the more I came out and I was brought up as a as a an opinion hater he thought of him as a prey to Hitler at figure out but %HESITATION the more I looked at this the less

00:05:20than that believe will that was when he has to look at what he did %HESITATION whenever his own is occupied the town the first thing they did was to %HESITATION was to break down the ghettos release noting the just released the Jews but a lot of give them

00:05:32civilian and political liberties as still living from being sold into slavery in water and built their synagogues you know this is not a Hitler fica well he's also guilty of massacres this massacre in Jaffa that sitting on the bed I do I get into that in in in

00:05:46a great deal of the selling give I think can at least a dozen different sources fool rat for that new this is in no sense I deal with it it's an objective judgment of that do you think he was some misled himself by the great man theory did

00:05:59it lead him into trouble I mean after all of them great men read great man history as well as he is very self consciously modeling himself on Alexander among other people to get a season yes they do is they were very much is here is that the assumption

00:06:12that for that he fell into a sort of lunatic kind of hubris that led him to invade %HESITATION Russia because he'd effectively gone mad is I think very wrong I look into this very carefully and look at the rational reasons for why he thought he could pull off

00:06:26the Russian campaign he he beaten the Russians twice before he has an army that was two over twice the size of that rushes and they've been across the Neiman there was many people in the army is there with population of Paris at the time and he didn't expect

00:06:40to get to Moscow he didn't have any idea that typhus was going to ravage his army because they didn't even diagnose typhus for another century he had a %HESITATION no sense that the incredible school should of policy the Russians put into place was going to make you burn

00:06:55down there and co capital these days the end and he wanted to stop on the way I'm do you think he had any sense of shame about that those events I mean decimation doesn't even begin to do justice to what he did to the French and the population

00:07:10of French young men I mean well hang on and %HESITATION fleet of the seven rules that he started the war in Spain totally opportunistic Lee an outrageously he also made the disastrous mistake to invade Russia and but as I say they were logical rational reasons why the other

00:07:25wars of the seven wars of coalitions with a credit against phone so against him in the first one he was any left tenant to to blame the decimation of the French film that people on the Padian is I think completely on fat I'm one of the %HESITATION point

00:07:38against him the reinstatement of slavery in the the French Terry trees in the West Indies yet difficult to defend I'm not and I think trying to fit this is not a difference in opinion is an objective of you'd know why just how is not compatible with the with

00:07:52the nation of a man who's interested in liberty and it's not it's not hymns of he was a man of deep contradictions and when he did abolish slavery of course when he came back from Elba in eighteen fifteen at the end of his career yes I wondered if

00:08:05you thought of that I mean that that period the Hundred Days we're in which she becomes again a hero for those interested in the ideas of liberty and democracy is this a calculated move on his part and you think it's a genuine I've I think you should it's

00:08:18certainly like everything else with the pen it's a bit of both it's calculated because he wants to amalgamate the nation because he knows it's going to be invaded but the seventh time by the seventh coalition is going to come down on him with the same time and he

00:08:32also knew that he couldn't continue living in the way that he had before and wanted to have worked effectively was going to become a liberal impala and Jenny nuclear just bring you in hit you call them to put you in school was %HESITATION yeah you think they'll be

00:08:45in stores data in contrast under what I was interested in is is some how ordinary people were living through the schools and how they came to see it I'm unaware as the first rule from seventeen ninety three to eighteen or when it's it's you know the French Revolution

00:09:02able %HESITATION and the idea will leased the government propaganda is that we're fighting against the server and the kiss principle destroyed all the crown had to do to a constitution of defense of the British impulse was actually I think it's an economical but during that %HESITATION the figure

00:09:18of a Napoleon Bonaparte kind of rises into the richest precedent with the Italian campaign the amazing mulches left the consulate the first consul and said that when war is declared again in eighteen oh three by which time people have flocked across the channel to see this amazing fica

00:09:38em then the nation of fighting Napoleon much easier to be fighting a single a single figure a single charismatic figure charismatic fica and turned by the huge propaganda machine unit into a monster at the wheel who will achieve that decimate first innocent from was very interesting I was

00:10:00fascinated reading your book entry that almost a sort of transfer market and and opinion in his early career is like a star striker I mean everybody's asking him to come in and be a general for them including the English at one point yes in the Turks and the

00:10:14Russians M. but to his people won't say who said nationalistic and the people were able to %HESITATION to seven four known as the %HESITATION the Russian army for example seems to be almost entirely run by Baltic Germans until %HESITATION could to self is %HESITATION is appointed in eighteen

00:10:30twelve but I I'd very much agree with what Jenny has stated in one this is this is a wonderful book which is written and when she talks about an impending being subject of fascination and bafflement that combination is a fascinating one in it so %HESITATION self conscious do

00:10:44you think he was some city %HESITATION as I was saying I mean it is a very interesting remote come the he makes when he meets good who was a great hero his and %HESITATION he's a report he reportedly says there's no such thing as destiny and the politics

00:10:58two guests I mean that's what goes to reports in the saying at this sense that that he's always on the line for the the main chance he's a kind of brilliant brilliant opportunist but not well he is someone who believes passionately that individuals can change the course of

00:11:15events in the course of history %HESITATION and that's something that comes right out of the French Revolution of course that that's the revolutionary culture which is fully imbibed up but there's something else which is also very much a channeling and and which he forges into a concrete political

00:11:32doctrine and that is the idea that a strong willed individual can transform the destiny of the nation so he's always had those two strands in him as the Republicans trend which eventually he loses sight of once he becomes I'm pro %HESITATION and then there's the other side of

00:11:48him which is the idea that %HESITATION there is no faith fatalism %HESITATION %HESITATION a strong willed individual can change the course of history and he's that strong willed individual I am damn calmly and Jenny was talking about that charisma and and you know the location that he becomes

00:12:07a celebrity essentially I'm the same is true for kind of musicians and artists isn't it I mean he becomes a figure of drama quite quickly absolutely in famously bay Evan we're V. is this this man but I what I I think is key is absolutely the individualism is

00:12:24part of the French Revolution but service liberalism and liberalism is not just about one person it is about the collective and I think bait heavens mania set by Nepal's than the name of his third symphony originally %HESITATION put that on the title page when he sees that liberalism

00:12:45is replaced by an absolutely wild individualism particular nation a full in Notre dom with the mock crown of Charlemagne hollering eyes and opinions heads that cemented by Evans as an off this is not the person I signed up for these and not the spirits of the right with

00:13:02the spirit of the revolution I called I called have my symphony which I was going to take to Paris and and show him I cannot do this anymore and I'm going to go to the road cut unlocked the death of that age Jenny this is them and similar

00:13:17things are happening in Britain I will that's what has to change it was with me I've definitely coverage of pulled by the carnation union and %HESITATION an because it seems like a betrayal of the Republican ideals and and people had to fold Napoleon was figure who would save

00:13:33the revolution as it were and give it strength but I'm fascinated by the very strong strain in under his book which is about the family %HESITATION and about the idea of power %HESITATION destiny from the very beginning in that he is a brilliant opportunities you said general by

00:13:50twenty four but but with his first political question Italy he brings his family over and then stole from in the palace and it looks as though he has the idea %HESITATION of powerful himself from the very beginning do you think this is true or does it grow and

00:14:06I think it grows and it mutates and I think he saw himself was completing the revolution who's gonna save the best bits of it quality before middle abolition of feudalism and the %HESITATION the sensitive found a %HESITATION of representative forms of absence that institutions and then he %HESITATION

00:14:25was going to get rid of the naughty bits the you have the ten day weekend the cult of the supreme being and and also try to get rid of the at the end guillotines there's anyone masculine seating on to put in that sweet when one of the thirty

00:14:38assassination attempts against them failed and I'm it's because of those assassinations the attendance that he decided that he was going to become a an improv because he's older that would stop the Balkans from constantly trying to assassination and actually they would know Bolton plots often that I'm Jenny

00:14:56just come back to your book am you've described it as a crowd biography and you look at this period through many different lives and it's it's not not a repudiation of great man history but it is an alternative to it isn't so maybe it is a repudiation audit

00:15:12and what you feel alone %HESITATION I know just as under didn't set out to write a reclamation I didn't set out to write to theoretical repudiation am I just became fascinated unless think it's probably something that we feel now to %HESITATION of the people who remain on the

00:15:31shore while great historical events of flowing over them and how can you into V. in you know in a what does it mean to use and also those of the wonderful little passage at the end of war and peace and toaster writes that the immediate events of of

00:15:48people's lives in intervene they form the foreground and sometimes it looks as if you've lost track of the wider events will together but actually it's the mass of the people working together the for the the some of the most powerful people the nation as a whole and I

00:16:03just thought what did this mean and and in a very personal way %HESITATION to a we've %HESITATION role right banker or a fama role right am undone the archives is so overflowing with wonderful lettuce that they stop being a we for a farmer and they become individual people

00:16:21that you know so it was a attempt to know what it felt like to be at war for twenty two years and you called it in these times that's a kind of shorthand for in these dismal times which is just a formulaic phrase which goes in and again

00:16:34in these letters on that because it was pretty diaphana very long that's quite true but also I think they give up saying it's because of the wool and I'm people just write in these times and they know what that means so the destructiveness of the times the bank

00:16:50has a hilarious because as soon as they try to stop people's over troughs extending they say in these dangerous and peculiar times I'm afraid we must all three it's a great deal that's from the I mean but and it but it's also appeared if you judge people I

00:17:05mean you're writing a time when the woody quality is essentially a shorthand for kind of rain beat extremism democracy is a is a bug and you know it's a terrible and dangerous idea here %HESITATION and yet at the same time you got people starting to explore those ideas

00:17:20and and wildly enthusiastic for you half the seventeen nineties %HESITATION is is I think often referred to as the time when Britain to could have had it revolution I'm people think note because we've already had the glorious revolution a hundred years before sixteen if you have a constitutional

00:17:42a government we have a parliamentary say in the running of the country but owned the this this seemed %HESITATION it too many people to to be a source of the Nile actually of that right so %HESITATION all of the access to a good way of living its own

00:17:58said that %HESITATION when at the time of the French Revolution many people in Britain actually wealth commit all classes because I think it's bringing fronts old enemy narrative British constitutional rule but his soon as %HESITATION workers and others and radical rightists and think and started talking evolution re

00:18:18rhetoric %HESITATION particularly the second edition of Tom Paine Sir works then it becomes the scene is a dangerous has it then you get an immediate crack turning into real player I station of opinion and I think it's crazy Jen Europa country he says this have the French been

00:18:34more motorists not put Louis to death all Europe would have been revolutionized the war saved England %HESITATION do you agree but now are up up six fascinated by that I don't think I agree entirely that %HESITATION all Europe which have been revolutionized am I think the prices which

00:18:56have been slow but I think the influence of the %HESITATION ideas of the revolution were being very very strongly felt and under the the shock of the execution of Louis accompanied by vivid prints guillotine blood ascending to heaven every power in Europe is threatened M. dot Wilson of

00:19:19galvanizing moment in a galvanizing spoke to loyalism in this country entry and couldn't couldn't agree more I think that %HESITATION the best thing that ever happened to pick to the younger and the and the article okay %HESITATION was %HESITATION at was the execution of Louis the sixteenth they

00:19:38couldn't have kept the nation together %HESITATION and less they'd had the sense of you could yes we will give you reform at some stage be kennels for it and this is this is a franchise reform of course and at at left laden and at the Catholic emancipation as

00:19:53well you cannot have it worse with fighting against a %HESITATION a massive will pop because between seventeen ninety nine and eighteen eighty five and the thirteen ten phones from the Sydney a failed state into most powerful and if you have any of the city has been saying I

00:20:09had a question for Jenny which is I mean at a certain moment the French are threatening to invade and Napoleon thinks that he might actually be able to do it what do you think would have happened if the French had actually come %HESITATION I love what if questions

00:20:25what would have happened I am the person was sick extremely well organized in theory %HESITATION there of the fences along the coast of their defenses locked all the rivers of the the extra anything about the war set every village every hundred is organized so they were very detailed

00:20:50plans in place about evacuation even if that version of pestilence so that might have been a scorched earth policy Russia I'm up I the the question is which of the French once they had landed have reached London I think they probably would after enough of of bloodshed I'm

00:21:11unsent what would have happened to the government which I don't think that the British were that point which of welcomed a Napoleonic regime however radical it seemed an entry look is anyone come in yes no I agree but %HESITATION that mean that would have been a few of

00:21:29the %HESITATION %HESITATION few if the loot Holland might be made prime minister in a in a in a sort of fee she S. sorry a %HESITATION quisling government but seven and they would have been that good a greater activity and the other that fascinating thing I think with

00:21:44is that the police would eventually of stock when it is completely useless was on the threat I'm I just wanted to %HESITATION before we move on about the continental system which is Napoleon yeah of essential trade boy caught a mistake miscalculation on his part because it it reinforces

00:22:02the coalition against him but it also means that Britain for a very long period grades grades up in isolation or develops in isolation do you think it's shaped differently by that experience is it is it part of the contribution to empire that with forced elsewhere %HESITATION yes the

00:22:19the the walls certainly had no short here altogether good way %HESITATION push the development of and powerful what I'm one of its great plans %HESITATION that the great day limit was whether you for the French on the continent away the route you to collect colony said this is

00:22:36great drive to the West Indies and then that the taking of from South Africa and it will say taking bases in the Pacific and so on but the the %HESITATION up continental blockade the Berlin decrease in Milan decrees accounted by the British by the end orders in council

00:22:56which affected trade with the continent I'm on that she's seen by brush manufacturers and merchants and certainly by the Americans he's traded into us as a as an equally bad so you have a great resistance against what does grow up which I think is is fascinating and perhaps

00:23:16underestimated in terms of the economic history is this amazing elaborate smuggling operation big big business millions you know good staying real through rush turned down south to cite pristup even through Africa extraordinary so it forces %HESITATION %HESITATION it forces and pop it forces new ideas about trade new

00:23:42ideas about billion exchange also suffect hundred yes I think it was very interesting in your book am Jenny is the way in which the continental system did home button the you mentioned having eighteen ten twenty twenty regional banks in some big London banks go under %HESITATION which is

00:23:59much which is not really the general feeling I think most people think the continental system is something that just alien but an overseas did hurt to Britain as well one gets this was in the works of religion night and Sir %HESITATION and it was a big mistake Napoleon

00:24:16and he he follicle Betsy and and economics well didn't even though he'd read Adam Smith but the fact was that England started at just the right lane what Kobe command here is is protectionist and %HESITATION and centralized %HESITATION at government dominated policies say who I am but you

00:24:33see because England had started its industrial revolution really twenty years %HESITATION it there was no obvious way for the continent to you %HESITATION unease front certainly to %HESITATION build itself out back economically except through this in the British orders in council did actually proceed the at the burden

00:24:52degrees from them sit here as I was saying I want to confirm that about you'll line on this now because you you write about the afterlife completely and %HESITATION you break this new book legend of an opinion politically eighteen fifteen may have been the end of the line

00:25:08from the pain and certainly was militarily but in a much more profound sense it really marked a new beginning can you just explain what you meant by that well by the time he is a defeat finally defeated at Waterloo Napoleon has become very unpopular and Franz and %HESITATION

00:25:24there's no doubt that %HESITATION even had he won that battle %HESITATION his days were numbered as has the French I'm pro what changes is four tunes completely %HESITATION first of all is the return of the mobile and the regime that they bring back which is a very unpopular

00:25:40a very reactionary regime %HESITATION and you could not imagine a more %HESITATION on charismatic alternative to the post in the Louis the eighteenth and you needed six people to be carried %HESITATION and so that is something that helps Napoleon's reputation to be restored to other things of very

00:25:58important one is his exile from a despotic ruler %HESITATION in a failed Loria he he he turns into a martyr calm and that process of transformation is accentuated by the memo yell descent eleven which he writes when he's when he's when he's that which is written when he's

00:26:17%HESITATION and which transforms him from this %HESITATION dictator and failed military leader into someone that he perhaps could and should have been %HESITATION a Republican lead %HESITATION a man who fought for the emancipation of peoples and so that's the process that leads to the to the launching of

00:26:38of the legend in the eighteen twenties comes the biggest best seller of the nineteenth century doesn't it is up there with sort of uncle Tom's cabin it's a fantastically big sellout I did it it's the book that absolutely everybody has read %HESITATION it inspires people in a lot

00:26:52of completely different and and and and at times contradictory ways it inspired some people to want to melancholy if you're the litri take on the memo yeah is that this is terribly side to terribly moving %HESITATION the the full the full of a great man but certainly the

00:27:11more popular versions of it were read as a kind of cool to %HESITATION activity two enthusiasm accord to take one's life into one times and that turned up early and really comes to be perceived in the nineteenth century as someone who came from very limited constrained background and

00:27:30made himself into this extraordinary person and that's a great inspiration for many ordinary men and women I'm you also run very interesting about the the after shocks I mean if Napoleon is the earthquake there these continual traumas and then annually %HESITATION in into the regions of France with

00:27:48rumors of his return %HESITATION which have an honest sort of Christ like aspect to them the the idea is if it will leave he's risen from the dead once he can do it again I might come back absolutely there's a very kind of Christ like element to the

00:28:02legend %HESITATION festival this idea that %HESITATION he may mysteriously reappear after all he had suddenly come back from from elbow so why not believe that he might do it again with an almost sort of in an almost miraculous way I mean he lands with a handful of troops

00:28:17in with a thousand troops gather an army and without firing a single shot from the Gulf is wrong travels all the way to Paris and and his re installed as emperor so that belief in his almost supernatural quality is something that feed feeds the legend %HESITATION an ellipsis

00:28:35Markham friends obviously in in the %HESITATION couldn't put it on you if you make a distinction between Napoleon S. and Bonapartists could you just explain that what's the difference between as well as I see it in the pearly honest are people who are passionate about the man %HESITATION

00:28:50and who idolize him %HESITATION celebrate him as a great ruler has a and has a great warrior but they're not necessarily people who are working towards the the restoration of the Napoleonic regime in front that's a subset of and they are the people who eventually gather around early

00:29:08and whose %HESITATION Napoleon's nephew %HESITATION and you impose in eventually in the eighteen thirties and eighteen forties builds a political movement which eventually captures Paula %HESITATION he's elected president in eighteen forty eight and then in eighteen for eighteen fifty one on the second of December which is a

00:29:26kind of magic date and early on in history because it's the anniversary of the battle of Austerlitz only and does is good data and restore them %HESITATION yet light and the connection to the energy the Cunningham is Jan you it is fascinating about eighteen forty eight because I'm

00:29:45I hadn't realized the the Bonapartists as remote Colin could not appeal to say many different sections of the population at once from the veterans to the Catholic Church do you think this is true that burn a partisan manage to unify all sections of society I think there's a

00:30:04before and an after eighteen fifty one between nineteen fifteen and eighteen eighteen fifty and and the late eighteen forties but a partisan and republicanism have a lot in common %HESITATION they believe in popular sovereignty they believe that Polish should be exercised in the name of the people they

00:30:20believe in the liberation of the polls so there's a kind of common heritage %HESITATION which goes back to the the years of the revolution and the impala wants to be on the podium carries out his coup d'etat in nineteen fifty one there's a radical separation between the two

00:30:35and then burn a partisan comes to stand for %HESITATION illegality a dictatorship and republicanism then goes on to them to follow its own separate independent course which is a doctor in the doctrine of popular sovereignty and the belief in political institutions that represent the people at is it

00:30:55possible in France to be a political leader with that in some way responding to the pain either by reaction against the wall well that's very interesting I mean I think the most popular French political leader now %HESITATION is is the goal and the goal is off was often

00:31:11accused by his enemies of being a about a part is undergoing himself had a rather ambiguous relationship with the Napoleonic legacy that a certain aspect of it which she accepted but he was very critical of of the walls and he was very critical of Napoleon's political systems and

00:31:27and in that sense I think there's really a Republican view of the pavilion which is different from the purely Napoleonic few in in the nineteenth century there was a dictionary the longest dictionary which had two separate entries one for but apart who dies in seventeen ninety nine and

00:31:42the other for Napoleon the dictator whose life begins tater who believe that they were two separate people I'm going plum the your talking a little bit about this because I mean you've been helping to arrange the this grand and that celebration of sheep as in Oxford which is

00:32:01doing all of the shoe but need to %HESITATION I mean the connection is that she was writing also in the aftermath of a pain in this house an absolute plug direct effect but from the culture is rising and on and on his music too isn't isn't and she

00:32:17but grew up as a child knowing the Asian is six %HESITATION and as you know nine invasions of of Vienna would have known that C. gin and in eighteen in on brief fits a decisive and he may as a child %HESITATION as a troubled have song at the

00:32:33%HESITATION of the proxy marriage between between depending on the empress empress d'orso Madeline was an imperial he was he was a member of what is now the Vienna boys choir and it's like you to the hospital would be present at the Augustine acacia %HESITATION for that for that

00:32:49for that grand occasion but reading the thing that guides she writes life %HESITATION after eighteen fifteen and the Congress of Vienna really at the time that he begins to write song is a rejection of Napoleon's rule and the way to the Persian approaches Europe and roll %HESITATION guided

00:33:11by a man who really dull struck this figure into the soul %HESITATION prince Klemens von Metternich become state chancellor of of the Austrian Republic %HESITATION the Austin impala and and vicious censorship of secret police to rival the Stasi %HESITATION and a world in which the public sphere to

00:33:32use a term coined by Jurgen Habermas has to turn from the public out in the open house in the scratch outs in the coffee houses to the interior into the domestic and of course Rudy over she but does rice operas most of which are banned Ole %HESITATION gone

00:33:48over with a fine tooth tooth came by the senses and does write symphonies Mr she was life is on the inside in tools writing songs six hundred fifty of them in fact order which should be informed than the oxidative festival %HESITATION and that's that I think is a

00:34:04really extraordinary thing to see she but and his generation his his %HESITATION who it hurts and all system right isn't you know I'm not dissimilar bunches it was so what's with encouragement shin and Jenny's book really disappointed that even if Napoleon himself had let them down including their

00:34:24idol but heaven that the spirit of the revolution spirits of Inverness and I had been born in the late eighteenth century without also dead particular in Vienna and what is not good enough for missing that come in that's the point is that that is the reason that Mr

00:34:39make what you have to have that what you have but you have to have that process you and you have such a process in place if you're terrified that the thing is still research into I mean it's there's an interesting parallel in Britain isn't that that some of

00:34:51the most draconian press regulations emerge as a result of the Napoleonic Wars that there's a terror of what might be sent yes indeed %HESITATION freedom of speech disappears and of of and I'm I'm interested as to think what effect it might have had on on music but this

00:35:11is the sense of the interior of going when we got to meet every so often say underground commune that were the radical spirit and it just it goes underground or take new old tool and it's certainly a people who speak out be Lee Han told companies are up

00:35:28constantly in prison they have to fight and fight and fight and on I'm not sure what effect it had on the US and I wanted to chew button his generation did they speak about this but I was just with a conscious of going yeah I was there she

00:35:43was was himself arrested in eighteen twenty years a friend of a man could you hand set and he was %HESITATION to ready and separatist and at very outspoken very anti church for very anti establishment and they were as a policy ship it was a big party boy and

00:35:59%HESITATION %HESITATION him and a number of friends were arrested actually at your hands and was there anyone who's imprisoned for fourteen months and then deported to the Terrel which is Renee from address book that had been passed around like a sort of porn during those days he is

00:36:14a very unstable place but then possible strip family again sick yet they they did talk about sets they didn't rice announce it of course because the sense would have been down on them like a ton of bricks tentatively to ink in kut %HESITATION ideas about that republicanism orders

00:36:33over essentially did they say we're going to retreat to the private sphere we're going to talk about our emotions %HESITATION because that is completely safe I'd say I think it's more about that that %HESITATION Jenny writes about the the late seventeen nineties and what's within coverage %HESITATION with

00:36:50with preparing the publication of Erekle ballads about turning away from the palace school rather the sort of move more obviously put a school towards nature and this idea of communing with nature when a man is truly liberated %HESITATION and there is a freedom in nature and suit in

00:37:06Schubert's writing that %HESITATION %HESITATION cheap it's the sort of poetic choices is that where in his songs nature is a major feature but also %HESITATION militarism is very much part of Schubert's song output %HESITATION soldiers a pair all the time the soldiers and never happy about it and

00:37:26they always %HESITATION believe goods they'd much rather would be with their loved ones that much rather be up in the mountains %HESITATION so there there is some of that very much present and she was out because when it's that sense of a I mean it's the sense you

00:37:40getting your focus well Jane you glow of a of a an entire country %HESITATION mobilized to me not not literally **** the case in the mid level mass in France but everybody is implicated somehow in these huge continental Morse everybody is %HESITATION because of the way in and

00:37:59burst in the militia of balloted for and then people come by %HESITATION about the militia apart so that the pool or a %HESITATION the people in the army but but because of that is organized by county organized by villages organized by hundred said that the the school teachers

00:38:17and the local parish priest to having to count the people think that everybody feels that they are a hold up in some of public way and also the sheer length of time means that you might see your husband marked off to war %HESITATION protected by the press gang

00:38:33and then your son unit and sometimes even we have grandchildren are going off to get them from me and commit to you was there a sense in which the war phrase %HESITATION musical into change and and concentrated because it made it now I mean certainly made it more

00:38:49difficult for travel to the continent from from Britain did yes yes %HESITATION well I think the the the systems of patronage changed because of it because Aristide press money was bound up in soldiers it wasn't bound up and compose a safe haven for instance that come to Vienna

00:39:05in the seventeen nineties and have benefited from this lavish aristocracy %HESITATION who at that time would work very worried about what was going on in Paris but when necessary feeling the stress at home and so were able to buy piano trios and string quartets and symphonies in operas

00:39:22except truck %HESITATION but when they haven that's it well comes into his middle Peter the great middle parroted by Ivan and then ship it comes of age and Stults rising Lita these patrons all either having to flee because Napoleon is approaching the city %HESITATION the delays that Japan

00:39:39has also written for that very reason %HESITATION by Beethoven all all that that that this is no way of paying for this music so what what do you do you have to do you want to create you just have to go indoors and just get on with it

00:39:52self and I was watching the dolls but it's interesting she but I mean not not on the podium like figure tool but the but the self made man in the same sense he he makes his own living he doesn't yeah I think I mean I would say this

00:40:04is what I would say I would say that they have an issue but for me all the true great men because they they do achieve an enormous amount but they also have humility which I think is what's lacking from %HESITATION Napoleon %HESITATION Einstein's and particularly comes to his

00:40:20family I I I I absolutely bolts %HESITATION %HESITATION Andrews thesis of all of the great man %HESITATION but like they have and I lost faith in a sing a full with the carnation I thought no I'm sorry for the kibosh on the revolution and I was I've set

00:40:35sold ready for him are up to that point and then the sort of pomp and circumstance of that of that event to the land and many of the many of his greatest weakness came after a successful %HESITATION but when one looks at me the %HESITATION the that's when

00:40:49the K. depending comes in a nation a fool in the %HESITATION the educational reform school and pace than he's still doing fantastic team boom things at Oct actually in Paris known off to race neutral you mustn't you mustn't lose your %HESITATION that just very quickly because we run

00:41:05and that he didn't die himself with a sense of failure yes %HESITATION yes he he's he's an incredible this is the bit ways where he is humble he's constantly criticizing himself Nolte in the in the memorial and which %HESITATION which is it here says is %HESITATION is is

00:41:20terrible politician rewriting history the person he's telling his friends that he is a fake okay well that's what we have to stop and and we should read and on the website if we run out of time thank you to all my guests and %HESITATION rodents in the great

00:41:34Cydia has everything lecture at Balliol college and author of the legend of an opinion Jenny you glow whose book is in these times living in Britain to Napoleon's wars and Gavin plum his meaning Schubert's Vienna talks said in the ship project next week revolution from the peasants revolt

00:41:49to Russell brand for now thank you and goodbye there's more information about start the week on the program's website go to BBC dot co dot UK where you'll also find many more radio for programs you can download for free